The Intentional Homeschooling Mini Planner
Today I’m excited to share something with you that I have been thinking about for quite some time: a homeschool mini planner!
I am a planner girl through and through but traditional planners and most homeschool planners don’t work with our relaxed/minimal/homeschooling as a lifestyle ways.
I like to have a little bit of planning but also a fair bit of just documenting what we did.
I also knew I wanted there to be prompts for different areas of our homeschool because sometimes I forget how much the kids are learning as we go about our daily lives.
Enter the Intentional Homeschooling Mini Planner:
I am super excited about this planner because I made it functional for the way we homeschool and I can use it year round, making my year end homeschool report to our school division a lot easier.
Oh, and the planner is undated so you don’t need to worry about buying a new one every year!
WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN THE MINI PLANNER
Curious about what the Mini Planner all entails? Read on!
MONTHLY PLANNING SHEETS
There are monthly planning sheets for each of the 12 months. I like to go into a month with a bit of a plan and on the monthly plan page I’ve included space for you to write out:
- encouraging words
- your theme for the month
- habits you want to work on
- upcoming field trips
- goals for the month
- resources you want to use/may need to request from the library or friends
- books you want to read that month
- space for gratitude – because I always need a reminder to stop and be grateful
This type of planning works perfectly for me and I know it will also work for my rebellious homeschool sisters who like to have a bit of a plan but don’t follow a strict schedule or routine. This type of planning helps me be intentional with my homeschool without feeling boxed in.
WEEKLY RECORD
My favorite pages in the mini planner are the weekly record pages. Not only is there space for the typical subjects but I also have a section titled “questions we explored” because my kids’ questions take us on so many great tangents. Another one of my favorites is the “best quote” space – because kids are always throwing some great quotes out there!
Here’s exactly what you’ll find on the weekly record pages:
- top priority
- best quote
- read alouds
- extracurricular
- English
- science and technology
- math
- history
- independent reads
- games played
- friends we saw (you know, in case people ask you how the socialization is going 😉)
- highlights
- geography
- the arts
- other
- questions we explored
I like to have this weekly page out in a high traffic area so I can use it to jot down questions as they come up and other things that I can document.
UNIT STUDY PLANNER
One area I would like to try to do better in is doing some unit/theme studies. We’ve enjoyed them when we’ve done them but they take more planning than I’ve been doing lately so I created a unit study planner to help me with this!
The unit study planner includes space for:
- the unit you want to study
- dates you will study them
- fun fact you learned
- relevant field trips
- books
- videos
- other resources
- projects
I hope to be using the unit planner in the very near future!
BOOK LISTS
No planner can be made by Chantel if it does not include book lists.
I think that’s a rule. So, there are some book list printables!
Included is a simple “Books to Read” page that has a section for picture books and chapter books as well as a “Books Read” sheet where you or your kids can fill out a mini review on books you’ve read, the mini review includes:
- the book title
- author
- publication year
- your rating
- and a few lines for a review/favorite quote/summary/whatever else you want to include there – I think this will be really nice to look back on and see what you’ve thought of the books you’ve read.
SEE IT IN USE
Curious how we are using the mini planner? Here are a couple of sample pages, I’ll add more as time goes on!
Raeca has been using the book review sheets to record her independent reads. She’s got some really cute reviews going on:
A small peek into our weekly record, I’ll share more of these soon!
And that’s the Intentional Homeschooling Mini Planner! When you purchase it you will also receive future updates for free so if over time I feel like something more needs to be added you’ll get those updates sent right to you.
